


Walking Disaster(s)

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Arguing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Declarations Of Love, First Kiss, Hot Chocolate, M/M, Rain, Sharing a Bed, Talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26765515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: He saw Bucky open the sketchbook, eyes widening with surprise, but he didn’t stop to watch any longer. Instead, he grabbed the first pair of shoes he found and yanked them on. “Steve!” he heard Bucky yell, but he was already slamming the front door and making his way down the sidewalk outside their building.He didn’t realize the shoes were Bucky’s until he tripped half a block down.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 117





	Walking Disaster(s)

**Author's Note:**

> First work in this fandom :) hope y'all enjoy it

“God, you can’t even look at me!” Bucky exploded. He slammed his metal fist down and the granite tabletop cracked, but for once, he didn’t even notice. “You keep me close because you have to, not because you _want_ to, and you’re so fucking disappointed that I’m not the same person I was before the war!” His sentences were all out of order, jumbling together in ways that wouldn’t make sense if Steve didn’t know him – _this_ him. “You think you’re obligated to keep me in your life because I wouldn’t have anywhere else to go. Well fuck you, Rogers, I was just fine before you caught up to me and dragged me back here! You don’t have to pretend that we’re still best friends, I know that we’re not, and I know that you would rather me have stayed dead.”

Steve felt like he’d been punched in the chest, his heart spasmed so hard. “That’s what you think?” he managed. He didn’t give Bucky a chance to answer. “You think I’m stuck in the past, trying to make you go back there too? You think I’m so goddamn miserable and guilty that I put myself through hell just to make you happy?”

“That’s what I know,” Bucky responded.

Steve swallowed hard around the lump in his throat, blinked against the burning in his eyes, and channeled his heartbreak into rage. “Fine,” he snapped. “If that’s what you think, why the fuck are you still here? You think you need to—” He wanted to scream, and just barely refrained. “If I’m so stuck in the past, wishing for the way things were, then why is it that I couldn’t draw a damn thing until I saw you again?” He walked away, storming down the hall, still shouting so that Bucky could hear him. “Why do I have an entire sketchbook filled with the Winter Soldier, huh? Why did I beg Natasha for stories about when she knew you, so that I could draw that too? Why did I spend every spare moment I had the year you were in cryo in Wakanda sitting outside your fucking freezer drawing you there, or drawing your stupid face on Skype when you got out? And _why_ —” Steve finally found what he’s looking for, tucked deep in a box in the corner of his closet where he knew no one would see, and he stalked back into the living room to fling it at Bucky’s chest. “Why have I spent the last ten months drawing _these_?”

He saw Bucky open the sketchbook, eyes widening with surprise, but he didn’t stop to watch any longer. Instead, he grabbed the first pair of shoes he found and yanked them on. “Steve!” he heard Bucky yell, but he was already slamming the front door and making his way down the sidewalk outside their building.

He didn’t realize the shoes were Bucky’s until he tripped half a block down - they were a size too big. He cursed loudly, startling a couple of teenagers into moving across the street.

His phone rang, Bucky’s face flashing on the screen, but he resolutely turned the sound off and shoved it back in his pocket. He ignored the following text too, and the one after that, and finally turned the thing off altogether when a third came through telling him to _get your ass back here rogers, we got shit to talk about._

Because _of course,_ the sky chose to open up when he was about a mile from the apartment, letting loose a deluge that drenched him in minutes. He scowled at the grey clouds and ducked through the nearest door into what happened to be a bar. A karaoke bar, to be precise. He scowled even more, but sat down at the corner of the bar anyways and ordered a fifth of whiskey. He hated whiskey, but enough of it fast enough could get him tipsy the way nothing else really could, aside from Thor’s mead. He downed it in one go and immediately asked for another. The bartender quirked a brow at him, but she slid it over. After the fourth in just over five minutes, recognition passed over her face. Instead of pouring another, she reached under the counter and handed him the rest of the bottle. “I didn’t miss a battle over Manhattan, did I?” she asked casually, in a low enough voice that none of the other patrons heard. Not that they would have, as most were swaying drunkenly along with the singer at the microphone.

“Don’t jinx us,” Steve joked weakly. She smirked, but the detached concern remained on her face until he added, “You ever have a roommate that also happened to be your best friend?”

Her face cleared in understanding. “Say no more. Bottle’s yours. Got a tab here?”

Steve slid over his credit card in response. She swiped it and handed it back and told him to let her know if he wanted another bottle, only half-joking, before moving on to her other customers.

He wasn’t caught off guard, but he was a little surprised when it was Clint who hopped up onto the stool next to him and not Natasha. “She’s with your boy,” he explained before Steve could ask, snagging the bottle from Steve and taking a swig. He grimaced. “Whiskey, really?”

“Thor’s off world,” Steve said gruffly. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“No, but you need someone to knock some sense into you,” Clint retorted, but his tone was mild. “Come to think of it, Thor might actually be better for this, given his tendency for blunt and genuine, heartfelt honesty, but like you said…”

Steve drained what was left of the bottle in three gulps, resisting the urge to cough. “I’m not the one who needs to get his head screwed on straight. And no, I am not making crazy jokes about Bucky, so don’t even go there.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Clint reassured him. “You are the one who needs to turn your phone back on though. C’mon man, the guy’s a veteran with more PTSD issues than the rest of us combined. You know better than that.”

“I didn’t feel like talking,” Steve protested, but a little ball of guilt settled alongside the alcohol-induced warmth in his chest.

“You’re going to owe him a serious apology.”

Steve scoffed, knowing full well Clint was right. At Clint’s unimpressed look, he relented. A little. “Fine, but he’s the one who started this. I wasn’t the one going around accusing people of trying to make other people be something they’re not.” Clint’s smirk only made him more annoyed, because Steve knew he was being childish.

“You don’t have to try to do it anyways,” Clint pointed out, ignoring Steve’s betrayed look. “Before people get to know you, they have two urges: to either be as far from the person they think _you_ think they should be, or to be the best person they can so you won’t disapprove. You gotta remember, as much as you’ve probably changed since the forties, so has Barnes.”

“I know that,” Steve snapped. “No one has to tell me that Bucky isn’t that guy anymore. I came to terms with that a long time ago, and I don’t need him to be anyone other than he is. I don’t know why he thinks I want him to be any different.”

Clint fiddled with the empty bottle absentmindedly before saying, “You ever think that perhaps _he’s_ struggling a little bit to separate who _you_ are now versus back then? Maybe he feels guilty for that, so he’s projecting onto you. That doesn’t make it your fault,” he added quickly when Steve opened his mouth to argue, “it just means that maybe you two aren’t communicating the way you should be. It’s been peaceful since the whole Intergalactic Nightmare thing; maybe, subconsciously, you’ve both been doing your best not to disturb that, and the tension just snapped now.”

“That’s a lot of maybes,” Steve muttered, but Clint had a point. He sighed. “How do I convince him that I’m fine with him just as he is? More than fine, I’m _happy_ with who he is now. He’s grown, he relearned how to be a person all by himself, and I’m so fucking proud of him for that. Do I wish I could’ve been there to help? Yeah, I do, but I get now that he needed to do it alone. He needed to figure out who he was before he could put me back in the picture, before he could decide if he wanted me there. Chasing him those two years…if he had ever told me to stop, I would have. If the Accords hadn’t happened, I really believe he would’ve come back on his own eventually.”

“You _believe_?” Clint stared at him incredulously. “You don’t _know_? You haven’t talked about all of that?”

“Well, no,” Steve said a little defensively. “Like you said, it’s been…nice. Easy. I didn’t want to cut open old wounds.”

“You have to talk about the hard things if you’re ever going to get where you want to go with him,” Clint said sagely. “I mean, you know me and Nat. Do you think the two of us got to be the way we are without a _lot_ of deep conversations? She hated it, but it was necessary. But the difference is, all of our crap happened _before_ we knew each other. Yours and Barnes’ timeline is ridiculously screwy. I don’t think anyone besides the two of you knows where everything fits together.”

Steve sighed again. Clint was right. At least it wasn’t Tony sitting here telling him this, he mused, because Tony would be much more smug about it. Not to mention he would hold this over Steve’s head for the rest of their lives, though he’d likely do that anyways once he learned of this conversation.

“Go home Steve,” Clint told him. “You don’t have to hash everything out tonight, but you can’t let it fester anymore. If you don’t want to drive him away, you’ll fix it.”

The remaining warmth of the alcohol was fading alongside any last excuse to stay where he was. “Okay,” he said heavily. “Tell Natasha to be gone by the time I get back.”

“She already is.” Clint grinned. “Barnes takes way less time to calm down than you do.”

“Or maybe Nat’s just better at her job,” Steve snarked.

“Ouch.” Clint rubbed his chest. “That hurts, man.” He followed Steve to the door and opened up a big umbrella. “Have a nice walk home!” he said cheerfully, and promptly set off in the opposite direction.

Steve sent his retreating back the finger, ignoring the glare of a passing Karen (he really did enjoy learning about “meme culture” from the spider kid) and half walked, half jogged through the rain back towards home. His stomach was tied in knots by the time he was at their door, but he opened it anyways, taking the time to toe his (Bucky’s) wet tennis shoes off. He realized he was shivering as he peeled off his wet jacket just as Bucky appeared in the foyer.

“You goddamn punk,” Bucky muttered, towel already in hand. He scrubbed it through Steve’s hair despite weak protests and slung it around the other man’s neck. “There’s dry clothes in the bathroom, go get changed and then come back out here. There’s a mug of hot chocolate waiting on the coffee table. Extra marshmallows.”

“I don’t need hot chocolate,” Steve grumbled. Bucky glared at him and his shoulders dropped. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah, get your ass in gear, Rogers. Clearly we’ve got shit we need to get straightened out.”

Steve trudged into the bathroom and shrugged out of his wet clothes, taking a second to rub a fluffy (and warm from the dryer, _damn it Bucky_ ) over himself. The clothes Bucky had left happened to be his favorite pair of plaid pajama pants and a threadbare t-shirt he had misappropriated from Bucky’s closet directly after the Intergalactic Nightmare, as Clint constantly referred to it. The whole thing was an apology in and of itself, and Steve felt his shoulders slump as his residual anger and defensiveness left him.

The promised hot chocolate with marshmallows _and_ whipped cream was just the right temperature to reignite the warmth in his chest, different from the alcohol, but more welcome. He mumbled another thank you to Bucky and sat on the couch. Bucky said nothing as he sat on the other end, criss-crossing his legs and leaning against the arm so he could face Steve. And the thing was, Steve had forgotten about the sketchbook he’d flung at Bucky as he’d left earlier, so he could physically feel the blood drain from his face when Bucky laid it on the cushion between them.

“I…I can explain,” he tried, eyes transfixed on that _stupid_ book.

“You love me,” Bucky said simply.

And damn it, Steve wasn’t clumsy, but he very nearly dropped the mug of hot chocolate into his lap. The only thing that stopped him was Bucky gently removing it from his hands and setting it back on the coffee table. Steve was aware that his mouth was gaping open and that he looked like a fish, but he couldn’t bring himself to close it, especially when Bucky continued, “The question I have is, for how long, because my head may be screwy and I might be missing a few things here and there, but I think I would remember you loving me. _That_ me would’ve noticed, and remembered. So either you were a lot better at hiding things from me than I thought, or this is relatively new.” When Steve only stared at him, jaw still hanging open, Bucky reached forward and closed it for him. “You’ll catch flies.” And then, when Steve _still_ didn’t say anything, “C’mon, Rogers. We can sit here all night, or we can talk about this and figure out how to move forward. So tell me what it is that’s bouncing around in that oversized noggin of yours.”

“My head is the same size it’s always been,” Steve said automatically. He groaned, shook his head. “Fuck, Bucky, this is where you want to start?”

“You’re the one who threw that sketchbook at me. I’m not an idiot, Stevie, you had to know I’d catch on. Now answer the damn question, how long have you loved me?”

“Probably since me and Sam were looking for you,” Steve sighed, “but I only realized it when you…when everyone…you turned to dust in front of my eyes and it was like my chest just caved in. That’s when I really knew what it was.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky asked, voice low and gentle. “When you got me back? This whole time, being here in New York, living in an old Brooklyn building, I’ve been thinking that you’re trying to get the old me back, and hating you for it. You should’ve told me.”

“Oh yeah,” Steve said sarcastically. “‘By the way, Bucky, I’m completely in love with you.’ Because that wouldn’t have changed anything.” _It’s changing things now._

“Well of course it would’ve changed things, but I wouldn’t have wasted all this time fucking resenting you for something you weren’t even doing!” Bucky stood up, ran his fingers through his hair and loosening the French braid Natasha must’ve put in it while she was calming him down.

“You could’ve said something too!” Steve retorted, picking up his hot chocolate again so he had something to do with his hands. “We didn’t have to move back to Brooklyn, we could’ve lived anywhere you wanted! We could’ve stayed in Wakanda or moved to fucking China for all I cared! I was just trying to do what I thought was best for both of us. I thought the familiarity of Brooklyn might help, somehow.” He deflated. “I didn’t have to be calling the shots all the time. If you’d wanted something different, or didn’t want—didn’t want to stay together, you could’ve said.” He hated the way his voice broke a little bit at the thought that Bucky didn’t want to stay with him anymore.

Bucky, apparently, thought it was equally unthinkable. “After everything we went through, after the shit you put yourself and Wilson through the find me, and the hell Shuri and I had to go through to get fucking Hydra out of my head, you really think that I didn’t want to stay with you? All those damn Skype calls while you were off playing vigilante hero…I always assumed, when it was safe for you, or when you were done, you’d come back to Wakanda. Fuck, Steve, I’m pretty sure I mentioned I was getting chickens for you on that damned farm.”

“I thought you were joking,” Steve said, a little ashamed of himself.

Bucky sat down on the coffee table next to his discarded mug. “Well, maybe about the chickens, yeah,” he admitted. “But I was deadly serious about the dog.”

Steve smiled a little at that. It had been a hot topic of discussion during their video calls, arguing about what kind of dog they wanted, where they would even find one (Wakanda wasn’t really big on the concept of pets, aside from the exotic animals found there). Bucky said more than once that Steve should just grab the first stray he saw on a mission and drop it off next time he visited him in Wakanda. Steve, with Natasha backing him, said there was no way they could care for a dog while hopping from city to city, country to country. She did, however, fully agree that the two of them would benefit enormously from having one. “A goofy Golden Retriever,” she said loudly, and often. The one thing Steve and Bucky agreed on in these little speculations was that, no matter what, the dog would have to be a rescue. Someone like them: lost, alone, in need of a family.

His smile faded though. “If you really wanted a dog, why haven’t we gotten one?”

Bucky shrugged. “Like I said, I thought you were trying to maybe be like we were back then. Make things like they used to be.”

“Things are never going to be like they used to be,” Steve said softly. He finally dragged his gaze up to meet Bucky’s. “Look, I’m sorry if I’ve been acting like…like I wanted to live in the past, like I wanted _you_ to be who you were back then. I know that’s never going to happen, it’ll never be like that again. I don’t want it to be. I don’t want you to be him, I want you to be _you_. Because who you are now, that’s who you’ve fought to be. You remade yourself, and yeah, you’re different, but all of us are. I’m certainly not the same person I was back then. Hell, I’m not the same person I was when I woke up in this _century_. People, people grow and change and that’s how it’s meant to be. Besides,” he added with a reluctant quirk of his mouth, “the person you are now…I don’t think it’s possible for me to not be in love with that guy.”

Bucky leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, so that their faces were only a foot or so apart. “You should’ve told me,” he said softly.

Steve gave a little roll of his shoulders, a shrug or a dismissal he wasn’t entirely sure. “Like I said,” he echoed Bucky from earlier, “I didn’t know how I felt until you were gone. And when I got you back again…I don’t know. Maybe I was scared of losing you yet again. Or maybe I didn’t want to overwhelm you, in case you were still, you know, figuring shit out. Didn’t want to influence you, maybe.”

“You’re always going to influence me,” Bucky scoffed, but it was fond. “That doesn’t mean the way I feel is any less valid than how you feel. And that doesn’t mean you can’t tell me whatever is on your mind. Because this?” He gestured between them, and then at the sketchbook again. “This is one of those big things, Steve. The ones we shouldn’t hide from each other.”

Steve’s heart sank, because if Bucky was saying that, it meant that Bucky didn’t reciprocate his feelings. Of course Bucky would never keep something like that from Steve, he had never had any secrets— “Of course, that makes me a hypocrite, considering I’ve been doing the same damn thing, not telling you I love you too. God, we’re just a couple of dumbasses.”

Steve stared at him, heart fluttering madly. “You—what?”

Bucky grinned outright, standing up halfway so that he could press his lips to Steve’s forehead, then his cheek. “God, you’re an idiot. You really thought this was some long-winded rejection, didn’t you?” He didn’t wait for a response, just pushed Steve back a little so he could crawl into his lap and sling his arms around Steve’s shoulders. “Romanoff is right, you’re an even bigger martyr than I am. You were really just sitting through this conversation, waiting for me to say, ‘Gee, thanks Steve, but I really don’t see you that way?’” Steve had the presence of mind to be vaguely annoyed with how amused Bucky seemed to be with his stunned silence, and yet couldn’t bring himself to speak. “Alright then. You want to know when it clicked for me?” Steve suddenly became aware that he’d wrapped an arm around Bucky’s waist so that his hand rested on the other’s man’s opposite hip, settling him quite comfortably in Steve’s lap. The fingers on his other hand were absently tracing where metal met skin over Bucky’s shirt on his shoulder. “It was that stupid beard you had when I first woke up, when Shuri had figured out she could undo Hydra’s grip on my brain. Not like you had later, I liked that, but when it was still growing in. You’d never had facial hair before and it made you look ridiculous.”

“It was not that bad,” Steve grumbled.

“It was awful,” Bucky disagreed, grinning broadly. “It was the worst attempt at a beard I’d ever seen. I don’t know how you were trying to shape it, but it wasn’t working.”

“What’s your point here?” Steve interrupted a little irritably, but he was sure the effect was ruined by the action of pushing a strand of hair behind Bucky’s ear.

“My point,” Bucky went on, and his voice was a little lower now, “is that it made me laugh until I was almost crying, and that hadn’t happened to me since before the war began, since we were kids. And I thought to myself, well fuck Barnes, this punk’s the only person who’s ever made you laugh like that, in every lifetime you’ve lived. And I couldn’t believe that it took me that long to get a damn clue.”

Steve met those stupidly blue eyes and murmured, “So why didn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to,” Bucky answered, “when you were done fighting. I know that Romanoff and Wilson were pushing you to retire. God knows you deserved it. And I really thought they were succeeding too, up until Thanos popped the fuck out of nowhere. So there I was, turning to dust, and the last thought I remembered having was how badly it was going to hurt you, and how I should’ve said something sooner.”

God, that had hurt. It had been the worst pain Steve had ever felt. Worse than hearing Peggy was dead, worse than sending Bucky back into cryo, worse than watching Bucky fall into the chasm off the train. And yeah, they were able to get everyone back, but the finality of it, of watching Bucky simply disappear, was more than Steve could bear to think about. He hadn’t known that anything, _anything,_ could hurt so terribly, and – no, he couldn’t think about that. Not now, not with Bucky securely in his arms, gently touching their foreheads together to bring Steve back to the present.

“So,” Bucky said softly, “now that we’re both done being a couple of dumbasses, can I kiss you? Or would you rather do this properly, and go on a date? I doubt there’s anything really worth it open this late, but—”

Steve cut him off with the barest press of lips to the corner of Bucky’s mouth, still standing on some invisible ledge that he wasn’t sure he was allowed to jump off of. Bucky still had that lopsided grin on his face, even as his eyes fell half closed, whispering, “You sure? Wouldn’t want to ruin Captain America’s perfect, gentlemanly image or anything.”

“God, you’re insufferable.” But Steve kissed him anyways, still a little shocked when Bucky met him readily, catching Steve’s bottom lip between his own. They kissed slowly, sweetly, until Bucky wound his fingers through Steve’s hair and Steve couldn’t stifle a slight gasp. He regretted it immediately when Bucky grinned against his mouth and whispered, “So that’s how it is, huh?” and tugged lightly on the strands between his fingers. His metal hand tilted Steve’s chin up so he could swallow the whimper that followed, and then it just seemed perfectly reasonable to Steve to bite Bucky’s lip in retaliation and earn himself a surprised exhale.

They kissed for a long time, Bucky playing with Steve’s hair and stroking his neck with a metal thumb and Steve just holding Bucky to him, arms tight around his waist. When Bucky finally pulled away, Steve didn’t let him go without one, two, three more chaste kisses, smiling into the space between their lips. Bucky, for his part, didn’t go far, just pressed his face to Steve’s cheek and laughed a little breathlessly. “We’re good at that.”

“I don’t know, we could probably use a little practice,” Steve couldn’t help saying. He smirked when Bucky snorted into his neck and mumbled something like, “That’s an awful line, pal.” Steve pressed a kiss to Bucky’s temple and kept holding on, unwilling to let him go yet.

“My leg’s falling asleep,” Bucky said sometime later, so Steve reluctantly unwound his arms from the other’s waist and let him fall to the cushion next to him. Bucky immediately nestled his head in the crook of Steve’s neck, stretching one leg out but otherwise cuddling so close that Steve had to wrap his arm around Bucky’s shoulder to make him fit comfortably against his side.

They sat quietly together for awhile, long enough that all the tension Steve had been carrying for the last few hours melted away, leaving him pleasantly sleepy. He closed his eyes and leaned his head on Bucky’s, lacing his free hand with Bucky’s metal one. He was dozing a little when Bucky said, “We should go have a really fancy dinner tomorrow night. That steakhouse Stark’s always raving about, the one where they just keep bringing you different kinds of meat…”

“Brazilian steakhouse,” Steve murmured. “That’s like a two hundred dollar meal if we do drinks and dessert, you know.”

“We deserve it.” Bucky turned his head to press a kiss to Steve’s neck before gently nudging him upright. “A proper date. I’ll pay.”

“Might as well do a date like that while we can,” Steve yawned, stretching his arms over his head, trying to wake himself up a little. “Probably won’t be able to for a bit once we’ve got the dog.”

“Right, yeah, we’ve gotta train it.” Bucky got to his feet, tugging Steve with him. “You know how to train a dog?”

“Trained you,” Steve quipped, unable to stop himself, and grinned when Bucky punched his shoulder lightly.

“Punk,” Bucky said fondly. “C’mon, let’s go to bed. I’ll make a reservation for the steakhouse in the morning.”

As cliché as it seemed, getting into bed together felt as natural as breathing, like they’d done it a million times before. And they had, during cold winters in the forties and during the war, but never like this. Never just because they wanted to, with no underlying reason like Steve’s frail body or the snow in Europe. Bucky took the side closest to the door, like Steve expected, but surprisingly, he turned with his back to it so he could lay on his side facing Steve. They didn’t cuddle close like on the couch, but Bucky tucked his metal hand under the pillow so he could tangle his fingers with Steve’s on Steve’s stomach. Steve fell asleep like that, on his back with his head tilted to watch Bucky snuffle softly in his sleep, holding hands.


End file.
